When we first heard Milwaukee was getting back into the nailer businesses, both with M18 Cordless Nailers and Air Framing Nailers we were a little nervous, could they be going away from their core user focus? On one hand they don’t even sell nails but on the other they have lead the way in many cordless innovations. We got our hands on the M18 FUEL Finish Nailer 2740-21CT ($379) recently and actually used this in a full kitchen renovation project (several post series coming very soon on that).
Finish Nailers: Air vs Gas vs Cordless
First things, first you really need to understand the different types of finish nailers and the pros and cons of each. First you have gas cartridge systems which were a necessary evil when cordless tools were just not powerful enough to cut the air hose. There are many down sides to gas cartridge systems, constant cleaning, added expenses, added thing to run out of and with the power that brushless motors now deliver the need for gas systems is pretty much gone for 15ga and up.
Pneumatic finish nailers on the other hand are not going anywhere, these tools are cheaper, smaller, lighter and easy to service, if air is readily available they still make a lot of sense. If your business is building furniture at high volumes in a shop environment or on an assembly line with airline drops every 10’ there is probably no reason you would switch to cordless. These situations you or your workers might be bump firing thousands of nails in a day and concern for user fatigue would demand the lightest tool option.
Cordless nail guns offer many benefits over pneumatic of course, while the tool itself is heavier it is much lighter and less trouble than setting up a nailer, hose and compressor. Similarly the cordless tools themselves do costs more but less than a nailer, hose and compressor. Noisy compressors, need for 110v power and other considerations make for additional hassles that might change from job to job. If you are doing finish work a cordless nailer on the same battery platform as your other M18 tools definitely would be a very attractive option.
Milwaukee M18 FUEL Cordless Nailers VS Other Cordless
Once you’ve made the decision to go cordless over an air system we’ll assume you have made peace with a slightly heavier, bulky tool for the obvious trade off in portability. With a cordless nailer gun the biggest most important question for us, is it going to have power to drive the nail fully every time, without delay, at different angles, no questions. From there we would also consider price, battery compatibility and durability/service.
With the M18 Brad Finish Nailer 2740 we had no question it delivered enough power to do every job in our kitchen project. There were a few cases of slightly exposed nails in normal process of work in different materials at different angles but would say equal to our previous experience with top rated pneumatic brad nailers, we’d accept this as a user problem not putting proper pressure, over any tool problems. We also experienced 2 nail jams which were clearing within about 10 seconds each, tool free, it’s a very easy tool to work with.
We also had a little fun testing in shop with the OPT Team in various harder materials and various length nails driving with no problems. This was the only time we used the bump fire and had to see if we could trip it up firing as many nails, as fast as we could. No jams and pretty much sunk every one even thought we were probably firing 2 per second. Obviously that would never happen on a job, just trying to test it’s limits, past with flying colors, very impressive.
Runtime or nails per charge, in our option, should not be a deciding factor on which cordless 18ga nailer you choose, focus on if it’s powerful enough to do the job. We will always recommend sticking with the compact batteries 2.0Ah (coming soon 3.0Ah compacts) with any brand of nailer to keep the weight down. With 1200 brad nailers per 2.0Ah battery charge and 1 extra compact battery on the charger would give you 2400 nails/day. If you think that’s not enough you might consider sticking with a pneumatic system to keep the weight down and prevent long-term hand, wrist and arm injuries. The more nails the more a pneumatic system is going to make sense.
Other Reviews on the Milwaukee M18 FUEL 2740-21CT
Finish work, we enjoy doing it but can always find the flaws in our own work. While we thought the M18 finish nailer performed excellently we were also interested to see what professional thought about it. One of our good friends Rob from Concord Carpenter does finish carpentry and remodeling for a living so we were very interested to get his thoughts on the subject. Below is a detailed head to head his crew did on all the top 15ga/16ga cordless nailers in 2015, unfortunately this review was about 5 months before the Milwaukee M18 Cordless nailers were ready so they were not included. But very in-depth review on cordless nailer competition, worth watching if you are shopping cordless nailers.
Rob more recently did a followed up with his own review and testing on the same Milwaukee M18 FUEL 2740-21CT Cordless Nailer that we used and he had a lot of addition insight I thought made sense in his video below. Since he is doing remodel and finishing work every day so we put a lot of stock in his options in this area, especially when they agree with ours.
On the flip side of the coin we have also seen a few negative reviews on the this same M18 nailer complaining about two problems which you will need to decide for yourself if they are deal breakers for you. The first problem is with thermal overload protection which will basically turn the tool off when it heats up from continuous use. We never experienced this and apparently takes hundreds of rapidly bump fired nails to trigger. Our thought here is that if you do that as a normal part of your tool usage you should be using an air nailer.
The second issue is with the recoil from firing the nail with the added power. This is a serious issue and with continuous use can lead to problems down the road which is why the more and more tools are reporting vibration (m/s²) as a normal tool stat. That being said we did not think the recoil on the M18 nailer was significant. If it were not for side-by-side slow mo playback in review from Real Tool Reviews below we probably would have dismissed it. The more nails you fire in a day the more this is a concern, with thousands of fires per day and everyday use the problem is magnified. If this is your situation, the lighter more compact pneumatic nailer setup may be right for several reasons.
Conclusion
From our experiences with this nailer we were extremely impressed with the power, balance, loading nails, clearing jams, making adjustments, line of sight and overall. We definitely think Milwaukee M18 Nailers make a nice addition to the Milwaukee M18 lineup. They did not just slapped their name on someone else tool but took the time to really build them right with a lot of power. For those already invested in the Milwaukee M18 platform looking for cordless nailers on the job, these tools make a ton of sense.
